Between The Spreadsheets Recap 07.10.21 - Weatherspoons, Facebook is down and the Tories are in Town - Steven Englander

Facebook is down and the Tories are in town

Welcome to the weekly recap of the podcast, where we talk about some of the topics that Steven spoke about during the stream.

This week we’ll be having a look at the Weatherspoons losses, Facebooks outages and a bit about the Conservatives conference down the road. As well as one little announcement that Steven is excited about.

Remember if you’re wanting to catch the streams live, you can go over too YouTube, or even follow us on Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn where you’ll find announcements of whenever we go live!

Weatherspoons

So last week it was reported that the big corporate pub chain had reported big losses compared to the year before, with sales dropping by around £160 million . Also sales were 8.7% lower, as of the nine weeks leading up to October 1st, compared to the same period as last year. Currently they keep blaming and comparing revenue drops on the UK lockdowns and Covid, which to be fair could be a contributing factor, but there are other factors to consider.

Obviously during this period, all the branches had to go through refurbishments in order to fit in line with restrictions, these included fancy pieces of plastic to protect staff from the other side of the bar, as well as PPE materials for them. They also had to pay staff members furlough as the vast majority of employees in the company weren’t able to work as the hospitality industry was one of the sectors that was hit the hardest.

The problem with ‘Spoons at the moment though is, just like every other big corporate company, is that they’re everywhere and they take business away from small businesses. Even now, there are rumors of turning my local library (which is a different issue) into another branch of the company. There’s already a lot of competition in my area as there’s a pub on every street corner, but I can guarantee that if this rumor is true then they’ll all start losing business.

Yes ‘Spoons is great as they offer cheap beer and cheap food, but personally I believe we should all go to our local pubs over these corporate chains, build relationship with the owners and the staff, and support them as best as you can.

Facebook

At the beginning of last week, the internet was thrown into chaos as Facebook, Whatsapp and Instagram were all down for a few hours and people panicked. Everyone flocked too Twitter (superior platform anyway) to complain and make fun of the situation.

There are a few conspiracies as to why and how this outage happened, ranging from sabotage, to accidentally deleting the sites and also a publicity stunt to make more news than that was going around about the whistle blower Frances. The official reason is that Facebook went down due to a “faulty config change” meaning the site just couldn’t be found. To add to this, Facebooks messaging service relied on the exact same servers, so no one company side could message to the department to get it sorted.

The only solution was that staff had to physically go to the data centres to sort it, but the next problem was that the access cards that would’ve let them in relied on the same system.

I think the main lesson learnt from this is that don’t put all on your eggs in one basket and rely on a single system or service as this could’ve been fixed a lot sooner. For example, here at Accounts Direct we have three different messaging services; Whatsapp, Salesforce and 8×8. This means we’ll never be out of contact with each other.

Conservative conference

In local but not so local news, the conservative conference was held down the road here in Manchester and it was just more inconveniences. Roads were closed or congested in the city centre, police were everywhere and Boris was out and about too.

They all came down and met up at the at convention centre in Manchester, despite the fact Covid-19 was still around but apparently they did this to show we’re past the pandemic. Before this however, Boris was spotted in a peculiar attire whilst going out for a run.

This now brings up the question of; what’s appropriate to wear and what isn’t? For situations such as meeting a prospective client, going for an interview or even just being in the workplace in general, you kinda have to dress for the environment. Wearing a tracksuit to an interview will 100% give the wrong impression. To be fair, there are more and more companies now that have a more relaxed view when it comes to office etiquette. Years ago I had to wear proper pants to work in an office but now, jeans are the norm.

Ultimately though what you’re wearing and when you’re wearing it does need a bit of thought and consideration as I can’t imagine it’d be too comfortable to go for a jog around the city centre in a white oxford shirt and black shoes.

Before I sign off for this week, we’ve got an announcement. Very soon we’re moving studio into a much bigger and better room where events are going to be held by us and by anyone who wants too. For example we’ve got people interested in giving talks, networking events and even an auction. If you are interested we’ll be announcing when you can arrange to come in for an extremely low and reasonable price.

That’s everything for this week, don’t forget you can find us on our socials (Linked below) where we post daily, as well as new episodes of Between the Spreadsheets every Thursday. Catch the full episode of Between the Spreadsheets over here!

Also if you’re in need of any accounting needs then send us a message over at AccountsDirect